Filed by Bil at 9:02 pm under Pop Culture

First things first: about the Chicago Transit Authority. People complain about the CTA. I hear people complaining about it while I’m riding the train. Usually, I think to myself: Asshole.

I am a fan of public transportation in general. It’s true. The elevated train (or El, as it is known here) is great, because it gets me to where I’m going and I don’t have to drive or pay for parking. I can even sleep on the way if I want. The trouble lately is that the El — the Brown Line specifically, MY line — is undergoing construction, which is causing delays. Ridership has been growing rapidly for a while now on this train line. People complained for a long time about how crowded the train cars get during rush hour, so now we have construction to increase the length of the platforms (as well as make them handicapped-accessible), so that the Brown Line trains can hold two more cars, thus alleviating the crowdedness. Now they complain about the construction. But they’d still rather take it than drive themselves. Asshole. Get off the train and walk, if you think it’ll be faster.

Look, I know it’s a pain in the ass, but it’s really not the end of the world. And when it’s done, those two extra cars will really make things nice. So shut up.

That’s all I have to say about the CTA for now.

There’s more construction in town than just the Brown Line platforms, by the way. We got all kinds of construction, baby, and I’ll tell you why I am willing to put up with all of it. The Chicago skyline has been a joy for me to see the whole time I’ve lived here, over a year and a half now. It’s majestic, truly. The architecture is just unbelievable. And I’ve been super-excited about the new wave of skyscrapers coming in, particularly the new Trump Tower Chicago; the new residential high-rise Aqua; and the mega-cool Chicago Spire, which will actually be taller than the Sears Tower (or any other building in the world except for the Burj Dubai, I think). Let me emphasize: I am really excited.

So you can imagine my horror when I came home and saw this headline:

Smoke pouring from Chicago high-rise

Turns out it’s okay, but still…in a post-9/11 world, any little incident could cause security measures that slow things down way more than any construction on the Brown Line could. I want those buildings now.

I was always enthusiastic about the Freedom Tower in NYC, and I really like their final designs for that whole plaza. But I’m absolutely thrilled about Chicago’s new buildings. It dawned on me this may be because I live here. My wife and I don’t just work here, we don’t just play here, we live here. And a year and a half isn’t really a long time in the grand scheme of things, but we’ve been here long enough to adopt a lot of things as our own, and the skyline is one of them. I still love it. I still look up when I walk around downtown. I point things out to people who visit from far away. I get a kick out of taking someone on the El. This really has become our town. We are building our home here.

While we were scrambling to clean our apartment last weekend to prepare for Devon’s family’s imminent arrival and make it look like a real apartment, I don’t think we took the time to truly appreciate the way we were decorating it. We have received compliments on the architecture of the place, and people have said nice things about the decor that we did have, but this time we really unpacked and made it look nice. When they got here, her family said something that made me happier than any compliment about how nice or clean or interesting it looked ever could. They said it looked like us.

Yeah. We’re here to stay.